A Blog by Paige Duke and Dani Nicole

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So many writers have the same dream: To get published. To get on the shelves. To get paid for what you love to do.

I’ll be honest, this was my dream until a reality check last year. I thought maybe … just maybe I would defy all odds and make it to the best-sellers list on my first or second novel. There’s nothing wrong with having that dream. But, I realized there’s something wrong with banking on it.

There are many paths to success. You may have seen this image before:

I realized there are other ways to live as a writer. You may sell to a smaller, independent publisher and receive royalty checks that add a few extra dollars to your account. You may make it big-time and sell to a big-six publisher, and still only make a few extra dollars. You may self-publish and flop, or you may become the next sweeping sensation (Amanda Hocking, E.L. James.) But the thing is, none of that may happen, and you have to go back to the beginning. Why am I writing? Why do I do this?

There’s something I learned about my writing. I am already getting paid. My heart is happy, and my soul is fulfilled when I create stories, lyrical sentences, voices so different than my own. I take a vacation into every story world I create, and I don’t even have to board a plane or check my bags. I connect to new perspectives, and I learn about cultural differences. I am educated about the world around me, so that I might create my own new world.

I am paid.

Contentment is something money can’t buy. We might have all the fine things in the world, but the free things are the rarest. Accepting your life, exactly where and when it is, is priceless. I would love to keep dreaming; I would love to see my book on a bookshelf. But that isn’t the point at which I will call myself successful.

I read the finale to a trilogy last week, and it left my poor little heart in pieces. How could this happen, I wondered. I mean, how could the author do this to me?

That’s when I realized that only a brilliant author can shatter my heart, and I’m okay with it.

I like to think becoming an author is a high calling, but more than that, making your audience feel something is an even higher calling. Think of your favorite stories, whether in print or film. They made you laugh. Cry. Smile. They motivated and inspired.

They made you feel.

That’s the point of stories, though, isn’t it? We wish to travel to a new existence and feel what it’s like to live as someone else. To handle their trials as they handle them. To feel the effects of life and death and sadness and joy. The repercussions of their mistakes and the celebrations of their victories. We want to live another way, if only for a few hours, a few weeks.

Stories are their own magic. You might have heard that before. But creating such magic is not for weak-hearted word wizards. Making people feel what you do when you write a story takes time, research and discipline as you grow your talent. But when you get there, when you make a reader cry because their favorite – and your favorite – character is in a situation he or she can’t get out of, the very fact that your story has so much magic will validate every word you typed, erased, threw away, rewrote, and obsessed over.

Ira Glass from “This American Life” describes one of the biggest struggles any creative professional has to deal with. We know what makes an awesome work of art, but our beginning attempts can’t seem to reach the standards we hold ourselves to. We try and try, and we know it’s not good enough. So what do we do?

As a writer, it’s important to persevere, no matter how hard it seems. The strategies listed below are more like vital parts of a balanced writing life. When one area falls, the equilibrium of creativity falters and crumbles.

Write

The most important thing to do as a writer is to write. That seems obvious, but many writers get lost in the editing loop, in which they limit their production by continuously editing what they have already written. Every novel you write requires time to create freely and brainstorm through prose without limitation. You might realize halfway along that you’re going to rewrite most of what you’re typing, but that’s the point. Every draft involves a rewrite in some way, big or small. Too many writers think every draft has to be a cohesive story, with everything covered from beginning to end.

Let me tell you now – that’s impossible on the first try.

Talented writing involves stacking layers of drafts and weaving threads together. The more you write, the more skill you acquire. Ira says to increase your volume of work, and I wholeheartedly agree. When I was younger, my dad told me to “practice, practice, practice.” While I always rolled my eyes, I knew he was right. Writing more, and writing often, will keep you in good shape.

Read

Ira also talks about having taste. Most writers have a taste in prose because they have been reading for a long time. It’s essential to keep reading, to keep exploring new ideas and concepts to keep up with changing trends and standards. While increasing the volume of what you write, also increase the volume of what you read. A delicate balance between the two will keep your creative soul well fed.

Relax

It’s important to read and write, but creating stories is mentally taxing. Take time to breathe and enjoy life. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that while you’re relaxing, ideas start flowing in. Sometimes just letting go is all you need to work through a plot hole, character crisis or query letter.

Create

Being creative in other ways, whether it’s painting, dancing, singing or Jazzercising, can help keep your mind in shape. Writers need to express themselves in some way, and break the barrier between thought and expression. Freeing yourself, and opening yourself up to ideas, makes it much easier to work through a draft.

Socialize

Most people think writing is a solitary profession, but it really isn’t. After all, writers do what they do so they can connect with readers. Writers work for their audience. Writing groups and conferences are essential to professional growth and craft knowledge. As terrifying as it is to expose your craptastic first drafts to someone, conversing, critiquing and empathizing can greatly help you in your journey.

I hope you are as encouraged by Ira’s video as I was. It’s a hard journey, but it’s a worthy one. And remember, no one can write your story better than you.

I’ve become quite the book collector over the past year. That has something to do with the fact that my idea of the perfect date night is to swing by the bookstore after dinner. Attending the Teen Book Festival in Austin and several author panels also contributed. I’ve become obsessed with meeting authors, and hearing about their journeys.

It wasn’t long ago that I was reading such amazing stories that I felt like writing one myself. In fact, this happened at a very young age for me. In elementary school I gifted short stories as presents, and throughout middle and high school I became an avid poet. After college I began to write novels and read everything I could. Here’s why: It’s important to read.

That seems like a “duh” concept but so many writers become consumed by their projects and forget to feed themselves inspiration. They forget to research their genre and compare their book to books on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. Knowing your genre, even subgenre, is essential when you pitch to an agent. They need to know how to market your novel, which means you need to know how to market your novel.

There’s a part of the query letter where every writer is supposed to offer some comparable titles to their book. These comps are not identical to your novel; often, they only have a few elements in common. But the idea is to tell the agent what type of audience would enjoy your book. And to know that, you have to be well-read.

Regardless of it being your duty as a writer to read all the things, it’s fun! Expose yourself to new worlds, new characters and new plot twists. Many writers are afraid to read something too similar to their own work, or feel intimidated by the great books already out there. But those great books, most likely, are what inspired you in the first place.

So read on my friends! Comment below with the titles on your February book list!

I had a Harry Potter themed Christmas. Yeah, you read that right. My mancrush categorized his gifts to me due to the obscene amount that I fangirl over Harry Potter. Such treasures of love have inspired this instructional post on how to appropriately fangirl.

Read the book. Don’t watch the movie until you’ve read the book. Otherwise you’re not a genuine fangirl, and societies of fangirls everywhere will cast you aside, leaving you to knit your Gryffindor scarf in solitude.

Write a review of the book. Log on to Goodreads and gush about how much you like this character and how much of a douche bag the villain is, and how you will never know how ___ could make a choice between those two dreamy guys.

Start discussions on Goodreads, conversations in elevators, and downright debates, always defending the honor of your beloved characters. Always prove that what you’re fangirling over far surpasses what everyone else is fangirling over.

Find your people. Casually drop your favorite book title in conversation and gauge the reaction on a scale of 1 to 10. If the reaction is 1, “What the hell is that?” then don’t befriend that person. If you get a 5 “I saw the trailer for the movie,” then you might have an ally. But it takes a true 10, “Girl where have you been all my life?” to tightly knit your new friendship.

Make your favorite fictional world your actual world. Fill your life with mementos of your favorite places, worlds and characters. Perhaps if you get that Harry Potter wand remote control, you’ll start to feel like you’re actually at Hogwarts. Or if you put enough Cheshire Cats on your walls, you’ll feel like you’ve fallen into Wonderland.

Fill your closet with obscure shirts that only true fangirls would understand.

Get everyone who wants to remain in your life addicted to the books you’re addicted to.

After those seven easy steps, you will officially level up to FANGIRL PRO. It’s not a journey for everyone, but for those who are called to book geekery, it’s an important task.

Last December Dani had a crisis. She didn’t buy a new car or get her cartilage pierced. She simply stared at her second draft, halfway complete, and panicked. Was the voice too modern? Did it fit her story world? Dani didn’t know, and she began to doubt her writing powers.

She fretted over coffee with friends, the steam of the java doing nothing to clear her writer’s sinuses. She played with ideas of rewriting the whole thing, of ditching the manifestation of many nights of insomnia, too much caffeine and bursts of creative inspiration. Though she poured her heart into her manuscript, for a weak moment she thought of throwing it all away.

That’s what doubt can do.

It destroys writers, trapping them in a constant cycle of rewriting. They have to make their manuscripts perfect. Have to. They can’t move on, or sleep, or enjoy life until their creation is absolutely flawless.

It’s so easy to listen to the panic that constantly orbits below the surface. So how did Dani beat her mid-draft crisis? She started to understand that being a writer means trusting her own intuition. She discovered that writing groups are fantastic and absolutely necessary, but staying connected with the heart of her story was vital for her writing health.

Dani realized this was her story – her masterpiece. There were no hard and fast rules. She only had her creative mind and her knowledge of the writing craft to guide her. The answer she so desperately sought for those long days was always in her own heart. Finish the manuscript.

“You know Mom and Dad are going to toss her out and get a new one, right? I mean, I won’t need her, but you will of course,” Tabi said in that new haughty tone she’d been trying out on her sister.

“Toss her out? What do you mean?” Evi squeaked, sounding shaky.

Lonnie stood at the door to the playroom, just out of sight where she’d stopped at the sound of her name.

“You’re so dumb, Evi. She’s old. She can barely do anything anymore without breaking. Her bug eyes are creepy. And she smells—she’s so rusty it’s all flaking off and stinking up the house.”

Blinking her big “bug eyes”, Lonnie looked down at her joints, where her once-shiny green paint was turning orange. She’d noticed her rusty bits, but she hadn’t thought they were that bad, and she wouldn’t know about it smelling, of course.

Evi’s sniffles drifted out from the playroom.

“Well, it’s nothing to cry about!” said Tabi. “A new one will be so much better. You’ve only ever had Lonnie, so you don’t know. The newest NannyBots have all kinds of built-in games, ones you’ve never heard of before, they do sports and music with you, you’ll see.”

Lonnie waited only long enough to be sure Tabi wasn’t picking a fight with her sister before she backed away. She went the long way around to the girls’ room so they wouldn’t know she’d heard.

Not that it matters.

Because she would get tossed out, she knew. She had a purpose, she’d served it, and soon they wouldn’t need her.

The girls’ room was tidy, just as she’d left it. Their beds on either side of the room were made—Evi’s draped in a pink, lace coverlet, Tabi’s in a new pale grey comforter. She was too old for all that baby stuff, she’d told her mother. The shelves were tidied and dusted. And now for the laundry.

Lonnie clunked to the dresser and dropped the basket. The girls’ mother would be pleased; she was always kind to say that Lonnie was doing good work, though she could see the woman was impatient—she had a taste for novelty. And Tabi was right about that. Lonnie was old. And she did break easily now. So she would be more careful.

Not that it matters.

It was only prolonging the inevitable.

Sometimes she thought of the days when she was new, when her programming was nimble and quick and self-correcting. She could fix anything then, solve the family’s problems before anyone even realized them, could impress the girls with her jokes and the tea parties she set for them and the stories she pulled from her internal library.

There was a feeling there. Her generation had such little capacity for feeling … she searched to identify it. I miss it, she thought. Yes, that was it. She couldn’t go back, only forward, and it saddened her. Now she understood why that phrase kept coming to her: Not that it matters. But then why did she still feel it did?

Lonnie grew comfortable in the motions of putting away the girls’ small folded things, trying to make sense of the words and feelings that came to her.

Then she heard one of the girls crying from across the house. She stopped to listen, decide if she should intervene. After so many years with those two, it was nearly instinctual. How she loved them.

Could she call it love?

Of all her feelings, it was the strongest, the most she could feel.

She decided she could call it love.

The cries grew louder, closer, and Lonnie was surprised when she realized it was Tabi crying, coming to find her. The child burst into the room, tears stained her face, and blood dripped down her outstretched finger.

Lonnie took the girl’s finger in her hand. She had always noticed how soft their skin was, how warm it felt against her own stiff and cold metal. Tabi looked up at her, she was still such a child.

Effortlessly, Lonnie flipped her med panel over and pressed the girl’s tiny injury to the glass. With a swipe of light, the wound was clean and sealed, as if it had never happened.

“Good as new,” she said.

But Tabi didn’t hear, she was already bounding back out the door.

The Trade-In

By Dani Nicole

It’s been a year since we got our Dadbot. It was Isabelle’s idea. She’s younger, going through that pre-teen phase where Dad just seemed like an annoying resident of our household, hell-bent on destroying her social life and fashion choices.

She saw a commercial for the new line of Dadbots and came running down the hallway, catapulting into my bed.

“Personal space,” I said, flipping the page of my Cosmo magazine.

“Kiera, look. Look.” She slapped a paper ad into my hands that she’d printed from the Internet. “The new Dadbots are on sale, and they have upgrades. Upgrades Kiera. Do you understand what this means?”

“Come on Izzy, dad’s not that bad.”

“Last week he set my crop tops on fire… in the kitchen. That’s not even legal.”

I roll my eyes. “Well what were you thinking showing off your skin? You knew he’d lose it.”

“They’re in style Kiera. Don’t you ever get out?” She slaps the ad back into my hand. “Think about it.”

After months of Izzy’s persisting, I finally gave in. After all, my friends were all upgrading to Dadbots and they got away with all kinds of stuff. Sneaking out at night. Riding in cars with guys who were a lot older. Maybe having a Dadbot wouldn’t be so bad. Though I couldn’t think of a single guy who’d want to ride in a car with me.

When they delivered our Dadbot, they took our real dad to a vacation home in Hawaii. They sent us pictures of him sipping from an umbrella straw on some sunny beach. He’d be okay. And when we booted up our Dadbot and he gave us each $50, I decided Izzy and I would be okay too.

Dadbot was great. We didn’t have a curfew. Izzy wore whatever she wanted. She could be hormonal and yell and scream and the only person who had a problem with it was me. I’m sure she wished they’d developed Sisterbots.

Things were looking up. I enjoyed my freedom as well, mostly using it to stay at the library all night, which worked out in my favor. There was a hot librarian assistant who took to me and showed me around the library I had so long ago already memorized.

He offered to drive me home one night so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. We hesitated in the driveway as the moon shone down on us. Wes, the hot librarian assistant, reached for my hand, and when I gave it to him he grabbed my knee instead.

“Whoa,” I said, thinly hiding my nervousness.

He slid his hand further up my thigh and I reached out to stop it.

“What are you doing?”

“Just showing you a good time,” he said, smiling.

I heard the front door open, and Dadbot wheeled out to the driveway, pausing near our open window.

“Is everything okay Kiera?” he asked in his robotic voice.

“It’s okay Dadbot.”

That should have shooed him away, but he stood still. Wes smiled and kissed my bare knee.

“I think something is the matter,” Dadbot said.

“We’re fine,” Wes said. “Go reboot somewhere.”

“I cannot do that.”

We both looked up. Dadbots always did what we told them.

“You can go reboot,” I said, thinking he needed it to hear it from me.

“I must protect Kiera.”

“Get lost Short Circuit.” Wes’ kisses rose higher up my leg. I squirmed.

“Get the hell off her, dirtbag,” Dadbot said.

Before I could register what was happening, a fist punched through the open window and wrapped around Wes’ throat. The bare fist was coming from beneath Dadbot’s exterior, which was now ripped.

“What the heck?” I asked.

Dadbot released Wes’ throat, and Wes scrambled out of the car and ran away. Dadbot returned his fist to his broken exterior, and began to pull it away. There underneath the façade of a robot, was my actual dad.

“You okay, Kerbear?”

Tears escaped and I couldn’t slow my racing heart. I was furious, furious that they’d given us our real dad instead of our Dadbot. But I was also kind of grateful that he’d saved me from Wes’ wondering lips.

“I’m okay, Dad.”

He opened the door and helped me out of the car. We lingered on the doorstep.

“Izzy is going to be so pissed,” I said.

“Should I keep hiding out as Dadbot?”

“Just for a day or so, then scare the crap out of her at the right moment. She’s getting annoying these days with all that freedom.”

Dad chuckled.

“It’s good to have you back,” I said. “Sorry about trading you in.”

“Then I would have missed the look on that guy’s face when I started choking him.”

We laughed together as he wrapped his arms around me. And in that moment I realized a real dad hug was so much better than a Dadbot hug.